So full of potential, so poor on execution. I can't think of a better
summation for Gathering of Developers and Bungie's anime-style
third-person action title, Oni. The game is similar in ways to
meeting a hot girl at a dance club. She's got all the right moves on
the dance floor, but once you finally sit down with her to have a
drink and a little conversation… Whoa Nelly! If only the reality was
as pleasant as the fantasy. Where was I again? Oh yeah, Oni. Let's
get on with the review.

Oni's anime-inspired storyline takes place in the year 2032. You
play the role of Konoko, a female officer for the TCTF who quickly
discovers corruption among the world's ranks and must save
humanity from extinction, as well as unravel the mystery of her
own identity. It's all in a day's work for this purple-haired heroine.
The story unfolds through text memos as well as dialogue from
brief cut-scenes. In puzzling fashion, the dialogue is presented
using close-up portraits of the characters that are speaking. The
lack of animation in these cut-scenes is quite distracting and really
takes away from the overall experience of the game. The plot
could and should have unfolded in much better fashion.

The main drawing point of Oni is clearly its ass-kicking
hand-to-hand combat system. There are a wide variety of kicks and
punches, as well as a number of explosive combinations that are
sure to land your opponents on their backs. As you progress
through the game, Konoko will learn new moves and
combinations to add to her repertoire (neck-breaker, devil spin kick, etc.). Perhaps the best part of the
hand-to-hand combat is the fluidity with which the combinations
are put together. The character animations are incredibly smooth
and none of the combinations feel broken at all.

Besides her martial arts skills, Konoko also has an arsenal of
weapons at her disposal, including the always conventional
pistol, a machine gun and later plasma weapons and a grenade
launcher, just to name a few. Interestingly enough, Konoko can
only carry a single weapon. Combine that with the fact that
ammunition is often scarce and you'll come to realize pretty
quickly that Oni not only features a fantastic hand-to-hand combat
system, it wants you to rely on it. This is even more evident in the
fact that weapons mysteriously disappear as time passes if left on
the ground. It's unfortunate that no blunt weapons are introduced
in Oni, but the hand-to-hand combat is absolutely stellar and the long-range
weapons do a good enough job to last you through the game.

Once you get past the initial shock of the intense hand-to-hand
combat, Oni quickly spirals downward. Where does one begin?
The levels were apparently designed by professional architects but
I imagine these are professional warehouse architects or
something of the like, because the environments are often large
empty rectangular areas featuring numerous staircases and doors, with
the occasional smaller room attached. That's not to say that Oni
doesn't boast an impressive level here and there, such as an
intense airport mission, but the overall scheme is disappointing.
Most of the levels feature locked doors that are opened using
computer terminals to bypass security. Later in the game, the
pattern changes to having to use multiple computer terminals to
open a locked door. It's frustrating to say the least, especially
knowing you'll take a beating as you run around from one
computer terminal to another. Luckily there are health hypos
conveniently left behind that allow you to restore some of your
health.

Graphically, there's more clipping going on here than at my local
barbershop. Graphical glitches rear their ugly head around every corner and it
even gets in the way of the gameplay. There was one instance
where I literally threw an enemy right through the concrete floor. I
was performing one of Konoko's tosses and I guess I got too close
to the wall of the staircase. One unfortunate clipping error later and the
enemy fell to his death. I probably wouldn't have complained if the
situation hadn't reversed itself later in the game, which it did. In the same vein, I've
also sent a guard's head through a concrete wall on several
occasions, all because of collision-detection errors. As much as the character animations during fight
sequences are impressive, they aren't so much at other points in
the game. When you send an enemy down to the ground, they
tend to drop as if they've suffered a concussion. They don't squirm
at all, they just lay there for a few seconds and then they pop
back to their feet, ready for round two. I've seen a lot of previews
and reviews for Oni in which critics have praised the graphics
as top of the line. Were they playing the same game as I was? Didn't
they notice all the clipping errors?

The controls in Oni are similar to a first-person shooter. You use
the mouse for orientation as well as kicking and punching, you use
the WASD keys (or OKL; for lefties) to move Konoko around, and various
other buttons are set for separate functions such as jumping,
crouching and arming yourself. The problem here is that the
keyboard layout is pre-set and there's no way to re-configure the
controls, at least not without editing a non-documented file. Why
such a feature wasn't implemented into the menu system is
beyond me. You can't adjust even basic elements such as mouse
sensitivity. On a high note, the camera angles that often plague
third-person action games didn't cause as many problems in Oni as
I expected. There was the occasional instance where the camera
got in the way, but overall I was very satisfied with the camera
movements.

Oni is frustrating in many other ways. Jumping sequences are
annoying because it takes Konoko a moment to get a running start.
Using stealth, you can sneak up on guards but I found this feature
was far too underused. Oni automatically saves your game at
certain points of a mission, but there's no way to save your
progress whenever you want to. This is particularly annoying in
the later levels, which are both longer and much harder. If you die
just a door or two shy of a save point, you could end up replaying
large areas over and over again. In the later levels, you'll almost
always face multiple enemies at the same time and at least one of them will be armed
with a long-range weapon. You'll quickly learn that if you don't
charge right after the man with the weapon, you'll have little chance to
survive. It's easiest, in fact, to run around corners and lure your
enemies to come after you. At this point it becomes more of a
routine to defeating guards. The creativity level in hand-to-hand
combat disappears in the later stages due to the difficulty level.

I haven't touched on multi-player yet because Oni doesn't support
it. Obviously third-person action games aren't known for their
multi-player components, but Oni would have been a prime
candidate for such a feature. The possibilities are endless in both
co-op and deathmatch modes.

The more I played Oni, the more its faults came to light. Without
question, Oni brings to the table an explosive and refreshing
hand-to-hand combat system. Despite its presence though, Oni falls
victim to a variety of issues including repetitive level design, an
awkward control scheme, numerous visual glitches and a lack of
multi-player. I really wanted to love Oni, but it simply didn't follow
through on its potential. If anything, we can hope Oni influences
the direction that future third-person action titles take.